Category Archives: Poverty

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT ARE MODERN DAY VALUES AND THEIR ROLE IN OUR LIVES.

20 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., Disconnection., Economic Depression., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Future Education., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Poverty, Reality., Reverse racism., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economic Depression., World Leaders, World Racism

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(Twenty-minute read) 

This is a vast subject which is not possible to address in an 800-word blog.

However, values role’s in our lives and their importance is not always fully understood.

Values are the things that are important to us, the foundation of our lives.

What I am interested in here is exploring the influence of technology and its advancement and how it now relates to the modification of cultural values.

Technology commonly exerts a strong influence on daily practices, changing the way values are carried out with each new development.

Will this in the end ‘kill’ our social cohesion and will groups of people be left out? Or will our social interaction become extensive and will our relationships get better? Are there any common values left? 

These are all questions that can’t be answered yet and can only be answered in the future. 

Technology is all around us.

It is so pervasive in our everyday life that it is impossible to get away from it.

It has become almost invisible so that most of us don’t know how to interact in the real world or with our environment, but it is how humans are using technology that is so devastating our common values. 

Before COVID-19 we were already isolating ourselves from physical contact with smartphones.

The virus has pushed us further apart with social distancing, online education, and social platforms replacing almost all forms of entertainment.   

Are we connected better nowadays with social media, or are we worse off?’

One of the aspects of culture and values is social interaction between people. How we behave to one another and in which way we do that. Social media has taken a big role in our social interaction. We no longer have to speak to a person to know what they are doing. We just look on twitter of Facebook. 

Social media and smartphones both are turning us into non-empathic couch potatoes and it is this passive use of technology that is the reason technology is ruining not just our values but humanity itself. 

With the arrival of COVID-19 ( His “epidemic”) technology isn’t allowing the young generation to truly embrace our humanity while creating a gap between generations. 

The real connection such as visual and emotional expressions aren’t shown anymore, because we are looking at a computerized display. This way messages could be understood differently than they should be, because they don’t get to know the real meaning behind the message.

If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest country in terms of population. 

Now is the opportunity to realize this and that we must use technology as a tool, not reality.

Our overbearing dependence on technology can be detrimental to society.

It is not the be-all and end-all of everything. Everyone is entitled to their own values, attitudes, and beliefs.

For example. From the outside, the cultural values ​​of a group can often be difficult to understand. 

In India, 80% of the population practices the Hindu religion. For the believers of this religion, the figure of the cow is venerated and should not be sacrificed. In western culture, this is a strange cultural value, since cows are a source of food and not of worship. 

or

Some people may see great value in saving the world’s rainforests. However, a person who relies on the logging of a forest for their job may not place the same value on the forest as a person who wants to save it.

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Before the coronavirus crisis exploded and confronted us with a life-and-death threat to every corner of our planet those who worked in what could be called taken for granted jobs we not valued neither in money terms or the essential services they provided to us all.

As a result, society discovered new heroes.

Times of crisis bring out the best in us. Superficial concerns fall away and we rediscover what really matters: Our values.

Now that the Pandemic in the western world is coming under control (we hope) and the murder of a colored man in the USA our worldwide values which have been honed by decades of biased history are coming under the spotlight, not just our personal views but societies as a whole.

BUT WHAT ARE THOSE VALUES AND HAVE DUG DOWN TO CORE VALUES AND WILL WE PUT THEM INTO ACTION?

It is easy to compile a list of personnel values and at the same time aspire to universal values of peace, human dignity, equal human rights, and freedom values.   

They are at the core of our being. They are our motivators, our drivers, the passion in our hearts, the reason we do the things we do and feel the way we feel. They help us to make better choices in life, develop healthy patterns of behavior, and form and maintain meaningful personal relationships.

They are the compass guiding everything we do – our choices and our actions.

So, if we want to change the world for the better, then we have to change
our own behaviors.

Living by your personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. Your values, after all, are simply the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.

Here are some more questions to get you started:

  1. What’s important to you in life?
  2. If you could have any career, without worrying about money or other practical constraints, what would you do?
  3. When you’re reading news stories, what sort of story or behavior tends to inspire you?
  4. What type of story or behavior makes you angry?
  5. What do you want to change about the world or about yourself?
  6. What are you most proud of? 
  7. When were you the happiest?

Think about our most important values and to act on them.

Living your values is about more than the big, long-term goals, however, it’s also about the small, day-to-day decisions. Putting them into action each and every day will have a powerful impact on our own wellbeing, the wellbeing of the groups and communities we belong to, and the wellbeing of the whole world.

The passive use of Technology is the reason technology is ruining our Humanity. 

Why is technology ruining humanity?

The only reason people do things is that life gives them the opportunity to do so. Which by extent, whether they know it or not, implies that people value their life.

Behind every use of technology is a person, as behind every murder, there is also a person.

We are about to pass through a long and very painful period of adjustment which is fraught with danger at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.

As the noose of technological enslavement tightens on humanity will our values have any value?

They say that innovations in technology can save the world and is extending democracy. I say that it is concentrating even more power in the hands of a tiny elite.

Personal Values are formulated by a variety of influences, environmental influences including upbringing, religion, friends, family, peers, and, education not by algorithms, virtual reality.    

Until we get better at using technology as a tool I think we’re cooked, we’re going to continue to extinct species and we’re going to continue to dig the hole deeper of the whole eco-social crisis.

If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backward through its production you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there.

You can’t have a smartphone an I pad or use Social media without everything that goes with it. You see mining, transportation, manufacturing, computers, high-speed communications, satellite communications, it’s all there, you see and it’s that techno-industrial culture that’s destroying the world.

The only way we’ll be able to responsibly harness the fruits that technology bears are with a renewed attitude of cooperation and care for the most vulnerable among us.

Technology has given us the tools to reshape how we live in the world; if it also changes the way we interact with our neighbors, it can be transformational.

Technology can inspire progressive social policies. When 62 billionaires have as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, it’s clear that political principles are skewed toward the influential in business.

Overall, technology has the potential to reduce suffering, fight disease, and level the playing field for the poor if we use it as a tool, not as values.

Values are immensely powerful!

We know that human history is full of hideous, horrible acts, but it is important it explains why things are the way thy are. The problem is that is it not taught in schools without warts so no one gets a free pass.

History is the past it cannot be changed.   

But mature humans don’t live in the past and we need to start seeing each other as fellow humans. If we do so maybe we can start addressing the real cause of inequality in our societies which is our present economic systems. 

However, you don’t have to go into the future to see what is happing.  In the last forty years, we have wiped out 40% of our wildlife, acidified our oceans, pumped CO2 into the atmosphere, destroyed vast regions for livestock, ignored world natural disasters all for the sake of short term profits.  

If we don’t have a fucking healthy biodiversity-ecosystem there will be no need for profits or values.

With world economies, slowly reopening, I won’t hold my breath as it is easier to keep viewing thinks as black and white and profit for profit sake, not Clickbait.       

We all deserve to be treated as human beings of worth.

However because values are culture-bound, what’s good for one culture may be (and often is) deemed an abomination by another.

Herein lies the ultimate irresolvable dilemma.

Culture gives us prescriptions for appropriate conduct. When judging values, we should not speak in terms of right or wrong, black or white rather we should look at competing values in terms of better and worse.

Who’s to say what my values will be in 2030?

When I hear competing values shouted by a person from a different culture than mine, I hope to take a deep breath, realize that he/she is simply expressing a deep need they have, and then perhaps I can share my values and needs without fostering judgment, evaluations of their character, or moralistic analysis.

In the end, compassionate dialogue changes live, not right/wrong judgment, or taking the keen. 

All comments valued. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : Where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now?

31 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Lock Down., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Poverty, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy., World Organisations., World Politics

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( An essential twenty-minute read) 



It all depends on how governments and society respond to coronavirus and its economic aftermath.

As we know COVID-19 is highlighting serious deficiencies in our existing system. 

Hopefully, we will use this crisis to rebuild, produce something better and more humane. But we may slide into something worse.

My focuses on this post are on the fundamentals of the modern economy: global supply chains, wages, and productivity.

I argue that we will need a very different kind of economics if we are to build socially just and ecologically sound futures.

In the face of COVID-19, this has never been more obvious.

——————————————————————————————–

The COVID-19 pandemic is simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises: The prioritisation of one type of value over others. 

From an economic perspective, there are four possible futures:

Descent into barbarism, robust state capitalism, radical state socialism, and a transformation into a big society built on mutual aid.

Coronavirus, like climate change, is partly a problem of our economic structure. Although both appear to be “environmental” or “natural” problems, they are socially driven.

Yes, climate change is caused by certain gases absorbing heat. But that’s a very shallow explanation. To really understand climate change, we need to understand the social reasons that keep us emitting greenhouse gases.

Likewise with COVID-19. Yes, the direct cause is the virus. But managing its effects requires us to understand human behaviour and its wider economic context.

Tackling both COVID-19 and climate change is much easier if you reduce nonessential economic activity.

The epidemiology of COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. But the core logic is similarly simple. People mix together and spread infections.

We can see from Wuhan that social distancing and lockdown measures like this are effective.

Political economy is useful in helping us understand why they weren’t introduced earlier in European countries and the US.

We are now facing a serious recession and we are living with an economic system that will threaten collapse at the next sign of pandemic.

The economics of collapse is fairly straightforward.

Businesses exist to make a profit.

If they can’t produce, they can’t sell things. This means they won’t make profits, which means they are less able to employ you.

Businesses can and do (over short time periods) hold on to workers that they don’t need immediately: They want to be able to meet demand when the economy picks back up again. But, if things start to look really bad, then they won’t. So, more people lose their jobs or fear to lose their jobs. So they buy less. And the whole cycle starts again, and we spiral into an economic depression.

In a normal crisis, the prescription for solving this is simple.

The government spends, and it spends until people start consuming and working again.

This pressure has led some world leaders to call for an easing of lockdown measures.

But normal interventions won’t work here because we don’t want the economy to recover (at least, not immediately). The whole point of the lockdown is to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.

If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood.

At its core, the economy is the way we take our resources and turn them into the things we need to live.

Looked at this way, we can start to see more opportunities for living differently that allow us to produce less stuff without increasing misery.

So how do you reduce the amount of stuff you make while keeping people in work?

You have to reduce people’s dependence on a wage to be able to live.

Currently, the primary aim of the global economy is to facilitate exchanges of money. The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that exchange value is the same thing as use-value.

This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up productive capacity with use-value.

What COVID-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. 

There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let’s take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services-key workers low-paid employee. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people – automation.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best-paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges; to make money.

People are compelled to work pointless jobs (they serve no wider purpose to society: ie. consultants, huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector) because, in a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets.

This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

While state-capitalist society continues to pursue exchange value as the guiding light of the economy. It also enacts a massive Keynesian stimulus by extending credit and making direct payments to businesses.

The expectation here is that this is will be for a short period.

Could this be a successful scenario?

Possibly, but only if COVID-19 proves controllable over a short period.

Limited state intervention will become increasingly hard to maintain if death tolls rise.

Increased illness and death will provoke unrest and deepen economic impacts, forcing the state to take more and more radical actions to try to maintain market functioning.

Barbarism is the future if we continue to rely on exchange value as our guiding principle and yet refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment. It describes a situation that we have not yet seen.

Could this happen?

The concern is that either it could happen by mistake during the pandemic, or by intention after the pandemic peaks.

Potentially just as consequential is the possibility of massive austerity after the pandemic has peaked and governments seek to return to “normal”.

This would be disastrous. The subsequent failure of the economy and society would trigger political and stable unrest, leading to a failed state and the collapse of both state and community welfare systems.

Then there is the possibility that we could see with a cultural shift that places a different kind of value at the heart of the economy.

The state steps in to protect the parts of the economy that are essential to life: so that the basic provisions of life are no longer at the whim of the market. The state nationalises hospitals and makes housing freely available. Finally, it provides all citizens with a means of accessing various goods – both basics and any consumer goods we are able to produce with a reduced workforce.

Citizens no longer rely on employers as intermediaries between them and the basic materials of life.

Payments are made to everyone directly and are not related to the exchange value they create.

Instead, payments are the same to all (on the basis that we deserve to be able to live, simply because we are alive), or they are based on the usefulness of the work.

A Basic Universal Income.

Supermarket workers, delivery drivers, warehouse stackers, nurses, teachers, and doctors are the new CEOs.

If deep recessions happen and there is a disruption in supply chains such that demand cannot be rescued by the kind of standard Keynesian policies we are seeing now (printing money, making loans easier to get and so on), the state may take overproduction.

There are risks to this approach – we must be careful to avoid authoritarianism. But done well, this may be our best hope against an extreme COVID-19 outbreak.

Mutual aid is the second future in which we adopt the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. But, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities.

The most ambitious form of this future sees new democratic structures arise. Groupings of communities that are able to mobilise substantial resources with relative speed. People coming together to plan regional responses to stop disease spread and (if they have the skills) to treat patients.

This kind of scenario could emerge from any of the others.

What hopefully is clear is that all these scenarios leave some grounds for fear, but also some for hope.

The upside of this is the possibility that we build a more humane system that leaves us more resilient in the face of future pandemics and other impending crises like climate change. 

A key task for us all is demanding that emerging social forms come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy.

The central political task in this time of crisis is living and (virtually) organising around those values.

Not low-paid workers or National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage because their work is so vital.

Successive governments had failed to reduce inequality between rich and poor despite two decades of interventions.

We must now with an uncertain future focus more on the journey, rather than the ultimate destination.

But be no doubt that we are at a crossroad where the low pay culture that has trapped people in poorly jobs is coming to an end. 

Capitalism Inequality can not be allowed to continue. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE ALL KNOW WHAT TO DO BUT ARE WE WILLING.

23 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Capitalism, COCID-19, CORONA VIRUS., Disconnection., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Refugees., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, VALUES, Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Economy.

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(Five-minute read) 


STOP DESTROYING OUR PLANET:
It’s no secret that our planet is in a pretty dire condition.

The problem is a massive one.

It’s so big that there are things that you do every day that are helping to bring about the end of the world, and chances are that you might not even know it.

Here are a few.

China produces a whopping 80 billion disposable chopsticks every year. The vast majority are used—and thrown away—That kind of production takes 20 million trees, and not just any trees.

Estrogen, one of the active ingredients in birth control pills and hormone therapy treatments, was introduced into a freshwater lake research facility in Ontario. 

The impact was almost immediate. Male fish first began producing egg proteins and then producing eggs.

Wastewater treatment and its impact on freshwater ecosystems.

Hormones that aren’t absorbed or used end up in the sewer system after they cycle through the human body. In areas where sewer water is dumped into lakes and rivers, the average fish population is about 85 per cent female. The cause has been traced back to the release of improperly treated wastewater that contains hormones from hormone therapy drugs and birth control pills. A stark contrast to the normal 55 per cent. Fish exposed to the hormones not only lose the ability to reproduce, but their accidental hormone treatment impacts eggs at the development stage as well.

Prozac. Might have something to do with the decline in the starling population over the last few decades—to the tune of about 50 million birds. 

Drinking straws. 

The United States alone uses about 500 million drinking straws made from a polypropylene plastic that doesn’t disintegrate or dissolve.

These millions of straws are around forever, making up a huge part of the estimated 12 to 24 tons of plastic that end up ingested by fish and other marine wildlife every year. And that includes about one million seabirds that die after eating plastics. One of the most common items found in autopsies? The drinking straws that come attached to juice boxes.

Eating frogs.

The fungus that’s being spread by the live food trade is different than one that’s being blamed for most of the recent die-offs.

The consequences of the fungus and its ability to hybridize create the potential to unleash an epidemic across the globe.

Antibacterial soaps, washing liquids/tablets use triclocarban and triclosan, chemicals while most of those chemicals are removed from wastewater when they’re run through a treatment plant, they have to go somewhere. When triclocarban degrades, it degrades into two chemicals—both carcinogens.

When triclosan is run through a treatment plant to make drinking water, it doesn’t exactly make safe drinking water. Instead, it makes other chemicals that can include chloroform. And those chemicals travel through the food chain in plants, animals, and ultimately humans.

Farm-raised fish.

Shrimp aquaculture has resulted in the large-scale degradation of coastal areas, the destruction of wetlands, and salinization of freshwater areas and drinking water. Salmon farming relies on the release of fish food and nutrients into the water, which always results in wasted feed and a huge amount of fish droppings in the water

Extra waste products end up sinking to the bottom where they react with the medicines and other nutrients used to keep the fish healthy along with antifoulant agents used to keep nets clean. That means fish farms are a breeding ground for sea lice, which are as disgusting as they sound. More chemicals are used to control the sea lice, which end up killing the other marine life that was supposed to be in the area in the first place.

Not the eco-friendly choice you’d think.

Soybeans 80 per cent of the world’s soy production goes into livestock feed.

1.2 million hectares of soy was planted in Brazil’s rain forest in 2005 alone. 

Global food waste. 

Every year, global food waste amounts to about 1.3 billion tons, and that’s such a big number that it’s impossible to imagine. Meanwhile, about 870 million people are starving.

Inequality: Lack of Healthcare, Nutrition and Education.

We all know that the world’s richest 1 per cent, those with more than $1 million, own 44 per cent of the world’s wealth. In many countries, a decent education or quality healthcare has become a luxury only the rich can afford.

Being poor all too often means more sickness and an earlier grave. 

The story of inequality in many developed countries, including the U.S. and U.K., is more sobering. However, when you are born in a poor place where every tenth child dies, as the well-to-do’s share of the national economic pie surges, a pandemic is a joke.

So what can be done to right this unsettling imbalance and restore a sense of opportunity for the billions of people who are being excluded from the gains of economic development?

The first and most important step may ultimately be recognizing the scope and scale of the problems caused by inequality in the first place and resolving to do something about them.  

Inequality is out of control with the human costs devastating.

Like many other environmental problems, there’s absolutely no easy answer but it is time we opened our eyes.

Ironically, with the coming economic collapse due to the coronavirus, we might finally be recognizing inequality’s great economic costs may be just the motivation that financial interests need to take the issue seriously.

Its not Amazon fortune and power that will grow exponentially.

The growing gap between rich and poor is undermining the fight against poverty, damaging our economies and tearing our societies apart.

If not with climate change added to next pandemic it won’t be the virus that kills you but the influx of refugees. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THIS CORONA VIRUS IS ASKING ALL OF US WHAT TYPE OF WORLD DO WE WANT?

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Disasters., Disconnection., Evolution, Honesty., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Refugees., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The current state of our oceans., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE FUTURE OF OUR OCEANS/SEAS, The Obvious., The Refugees, The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Seven-minute read) 

I know that humans are the only type of species that are suitable to manage the earth but it does not make them the right species!

Apparently not.

Did we ever think that we would be living in a world where it is life-threatening to go our side and I am not talking about terrorists or any other Hollywood science fiction movie scenario?

There’s a lot of bad news out there but this is not a death sentence. 

 It’s time to save the world. ” We can use it as we wish”

No one owns the earth. No one has the right to do whatever they want.

We’re not the only thing that lives here, nor are we more important in any way.

We cannot use the world as we please as our actions are endangering not just us but other species. 

Our Earth was meant to be lived on in union with its Ecosystems and we cannot allow that to be broken.

The Coronavirus ( Covid  19 ) is illuminating what is wrong with our world. 

So our most crucial life questions are: 

What Kind of World Do We Want to Leave to Our Children?

Whatever your interest — whether it’s the environment, health care, poverty, or education — there are simple steps each of us can take to make life better not just for someone in our own community. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” now needs an Earth Declaration. 

Here are the top six of my non-legal binding the goals.  

Use Global Warming to Solve Global Warming.

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss.

Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

Sustainable Development Goals which will take years for a critical mass of governments to actually rally behind. 

The allocation of resources to fight climate change and other environmental issues over the next decade can be achieved by making a profit for profit sake pay. ( See the previous post on a 0.05% World Aid Commission. How it could be implemented so the costs are spread fairly) 

End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Global poverty. Reduce inequality within and among countries. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Expand access to clean drinking water, green energy.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation. 

The 2020s sounds like such a radical futuristic decade however to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development requires a coherent and plausible conception of social justice. A basic income, a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.

Stop the sale of arms. 

The estimate of the total value of the global arms trade in 2017 was at least $95 billion.* However, the true figure is likely to be higher. On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world — even if you’re only hearing about a few of them on the news.

There are an estimated 11-12 million refugees in the world today with between 12-24 million Internally Displaced Persons.

Electoral Reform with Citizens’ Assemblies. 

These aren’t just focus groups or consultations though but for the members to engage in serious, informed reflection on important policy matters with people they may never normally meet.

As Hubert Reeves ( Canadian-French Astrophysicist) say’s, ” Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and Destroys a Visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping “

Feel free to have idea sex between your ideas and mine so we can come up with even better ideas. It’s a way of saying: “We agree that these are the world’s top priorities right now.”

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE CRISES FACING THE WORLD.

08 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Disasters., Environment, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Poverty, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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Five minute read.

With all aspects of our life made into a form of viewing entertainment. We live in a world that has become desensitized. 

The result is that most if not all of us pay little attention to the state of Earth.

The drawn-out nature of many crises now facing us all underscores the importance of coming together to urgently resolve the root causes of a humanitarian crisis.

It is unlikely the situation will improve. 

 Where do you even start? Which issues are the most urgent?

 

So this post is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.

Sometimes it can seem as though there are too many – from climate change to inequality around the world, too many people living without access to medical care its not worth knowing. 

But just in case here is why we are in such a mess. 

12.9% of the world is undernourished, about 30% of the adult population is overweight.

Conflict continues to drive displacement and food insecurity but communicable diseases are still responsible for 71% of deaths.

The international community, and in particular wealthy nations, are failing to meaningfully share the responsibility for protecting people who have fled their homes in search of safety. 

  • 25.9 million refugees globally — the highest level ever recorded
  • Half of the world’s refugees are children
  • A third of refugees — 6.7 million people — is hosted by the world’s poorest countries
A mother rocks her sick child in a camp in Afghanistan's Badghis' Muqur district, where the IRC supports displaced families.

Driven by nearly two decades of conflict and political instability; 9.4 million Afghans (25 per cent of the population) need humanitarian assistance. There are almost 2.5 million registered Afghan refugees living outside the country.

4.6 million Venezuelans have fled the country as of November 2019. 

There are over 2 million displaced Nigerians.

Eleven million Syrians (65 per cent of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Democratic Republic of Congo 15.9 million people require humanitarian assistance. 

Over 24 million Yemenis (80 per cent of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance,

South Sudan 7.5 million people need humanitarian assistance. 

600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.

Forests are key to producing the air we breathe, yet these are being depleted at a rate of 26 million hectares every year.

Extinctions are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace. Not only are we losing flora and fauna, but we are also damaging our ecosystems, and throwing them out of balance

Our oceans are under threat.  

Sand and gravel are now the most-extracted materials in the world, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass.

Climate change is another issue.

There is actually not enough fresh water for each person currently living on the planet. 

Population growth. The number of people on the planet is set to rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 with 2 billion aged over 60.

More than 61 million jobs have been lost since the start of the global economic crisis in 2008, leaving more than 200 million people unemployed globally.

With 43% of the world’s population connected to the internet, regulatory frameworks are unable to keep up.

In this complex moment in history, in which so many are suffering and the Earth itself is in peril

The cloud of nuclear destruction hangs over each of our days.

But the question remains what kind of society do we want to have?

The reasons behind current trends are many and complex.

The detail of the information that we are beginning to capture about our world is mind-blowing. The granularity of the data we are beginning to collect through advances in technology. While improving our lives through cleaner energy sources, personalized nanomedicine and nano-engineered materials.

In all of these areas, progress will undoubtedly lead to a reduction in conventional jobs and inequality on a global scale not seen before.

But technology alone can not break the self-reinforcing mechanism that causes poverty to persist. 

As highly innovative products emerging will, however, promote inequality if only a few have access to this new technology and the knowledge to master it.

Education is probably the single most important tool for turning technology into an engine for opportunities for all.

Public policies, which are currently mainly focused on fostering economic growth, should focus on providing further opportunities, less inequality and a more sustainable economic, social and environmental future.

Technology is not the solution but it is, for sure, a powerful tool towards achieving this ambitious objective.

Whether it’s turning promises on climate change into action, rebuilding trust in the financial system, or connecting the world to the internet there is an overall lack of long-term investment, which has serious implications for global growth.

But the most astonishing canvas is right in front of us if only we would listen with our ear to the earth we might see the light we cannot see.

In short, the world urgently needs a new, global plan based on genuine international cooperation and a meaningful and fair sharing of responsibilities. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

https://youtu.be/dnxRCHVLGRo

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS BUILDING A DIGITAL POORHOUSE, AUTOMATING INEQUALITY WHILE HURTING THE MOST VULNERABLE.

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read)

Should we worry about the rise of artificial intelligence or celebrate it?

Both is the answer.

We all inhabit this new regime of digital data but we don’t all inhabit it in the same way and the pursuit of rapid growth by way of technology won’t solve the huge challenges we face.

A more honest, humane approach is the answer.

If you believe the hype, technology is going to help us end global poverty, that’s easier said than done in a world where most product innovations are geared toward the rich.

The prospect of billions rising up from poverty with nothing more than gadgets is indeed a fanciful notion. This is because poverty is entirely a man-made creation. Capitalism is driven by greed, generating a power structure, which moves wealth disproportionately into the hands of the few.

But why are our societies becoming increasingly unequal, and what can we (or should we) do about it?A homeless man outside Victoria Station in London.

Forget where science ends and ideology begins it is the mechanisms behind the persistence of poverty that counts.

Technology cannot solve the problem of economic disparity.

We often believe that our digital decision-making tools, like algorithms or artificial intelligence or integrated databases, are more objective and more neutral than human beings.

Totally false.

We are building not just ill-conceived mathematical models now micromanage the economy, from advertising to prisons but also hiding the profit of multinational companies in the cloud.

We are building:  A DIGITAL POOR HOUSE.

Even though we live in a hyperconnected world we are watching inequality exploding as we walk past people on the street looking at our smartphones.

The spreading of these kinds of systems is now way beyond just the public service systems that they’re in now. For example, high-frequency trading algorithms that run 99.9% of the world stock exchanges are plundering not just finite resources they are jeopardising our peaceful existence.

Feel free to ignore the weight of the evidence that is now becoming crystal-clear, so stark, that the trade-off of the growth of the economy and the survival of the planet are now intertwined. So we have to go into a mode where we are first educating the people about what’s causing this inequality and acknowledging that technology is part of that cost, and then society has to decide how to proceed.

Deep cultural and political changes are needed in order to think through these technologies in order to get to better systems.

This should apply to all technology – nanotechnology, biotech.

I also really believe we need to stop using these systems to avoid some of the most pressing moral and political dilemmas of our time, which is not just poverty but racism.

Unfortunately, we have Profit-seeking Algorithms that have no moral or ethical bases.

Algorithms — a set of steps computers follow to accomplish a task — are used in our daily digital lives to do everything from making airline reservations to searching the web. They are also increasingly being used in public services, such as systems that decide which homeless person gets housing.

AI with faceless algorithms is worsening the effects and concentrating the power of the wealthy. They are likely to dramatically increase income disparity, perhaps more so than other technologies that have come about recently.

Digital innovation in the form of profit-seeking algorithms that it’s not just going to be benefitting a small fraction of the world’s population, or just a few large corporations. is reinforcing, rather than improving, inequality.

Institutions have embraced digital technologies they are outsourcing the decision to a machine to cut costs avoiding the human costs. They say, “We have this incredible overwhelming need. We don’t have enough resources, so we have to use these systems to make these incredibly difficult decisions.”

If all the resources are automated, then who actually controls the automation?

Is it every one or is it a few select people?

My great fear with these systems is we’re actually using them as a kind of empathy override, meaning that we are struggling with questions that are almost impossible for human beings to make.

We’re smuggling moral and political assumptions into them about who should share in prosperity.

There’s already an expectation that people will be forced to trade one of their human rights, like their information or their privacy, for another human right.

The economic prosperity created by AI should be shared broadly, to benefit all of humanity otherwise they will lead to an even greater disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the world.

If AI takes away people’s jobs and only leaves wealth in the hands of those people owning the robots, then that’s going to exacerbate some trends that are already happening.

People now with “predictive data” have real concerns about informed consent. About how their data is being shared, whether it’s legal and whether it’s morally right.

Why?

Because it is impossible to work out why the algorithms had gone against them, or to find a human caseworker to override the decision.

How can we change the societal mindset that currently discourages a greater sharing of wealth? Or is that even a change we should consider?

We’re using these technologies to avoid important political decisions. Exacerbating the divides between the developed and developing world, and the haves and have nots in our society.

The change will only occur when policymakers and voters understand the true scale of the problem. This is hard when we live in an era that likes to celebrate digitisation — and where the elites are usually shielded from the consequences of those algorithms.

Restoring human dignity to its central place has the potential to set off a profound rethinking of economic priorities and the ways in which societies care for their members, particularly when they are in need. If enough of us want to change the status quo for good, then with our collective creativity, with our hunger to solve really hard problems, we will find technology an incredibly powerful tool in our arsenal.

Technology can move commodities (food, jobs, wealth) from areas of surplus supply to regions with under-served markets.

Technology can only help us if we chose to make the best use of it.

Computing has long been perceived to be a culture-free zone — this needs to change.

Today more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet.

I use that metaphor specifically because I think that these systems, although we talk about them often as disruptors, are really more intensifiers and amplifiers of processes that have been with us for a long time, at least since the 1800s.

At a time of unprecedented global challenges platforms like Google Facebook, Twitter and there like must be made to use the power of their platforms to stop the DIGITAL POOR HOUSE instead of hoarding profits with profit-seeking algorithms.

If not because bias has been a historical norm, it because us the users of your platform will develop self-defence.

So, next time if you think AI is not affecting you, take out your smartphone.

If Twitter’s not your choice of poison, maybe it’s Facebook or Instagram, or Snapchat or any of the myriad of social media apps out there they are all affecting your decisions and our lifestyles every day.

They are all tailored according to what we are likely to respond to. specifically designed to attract the attention of its members – and so inevitably to confirm them in their opinions and prejudices,  with several extra bills to pay in order to remain a normal citizen. 

Its a ‘mean’ not the ultimate solution.

AI has become so successful in determining our interests and serving us ads that the global digital ad industry has crossed trillions.

artificial intelligence concept Stock Photo - 90948450

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’ S: WHICH GLOBAL ISSUE SHOULD WE BE WORKING ON TO HAVE THE GREATEST IMPACT?

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Education, Environment, Evolution, Fresh Water., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality., Life., Our Common Values., Poverty, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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(Ten-minute read)

By not be able to coordinate any universal action we now pose the greatest threat to our own survival.

Future civilisation might well create a world without need or want, and make mindblowing intellectual and artistic achievements but in this new age, what should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?

We could build a far more just and virtuous society but if we let civilisation end, then none of this can ever happen.

An overwhelming amount of political attention goes on concrete issues that help the present generation in the short-term since that’s what gets votes but at the cost of future generations that have no way to stand up for their interests, whether economically or politically.

You might be surprised if you ask the above question using AI.

Climate change comes some way down the list.

Natural risks are still quite small in absolute terms.

The risks from nuclear weapons are greater than all the natural risks put together. So, it seems like the chance of a massive climate disaster created by CO2 is perhaps similar to the chance of a nuclear war.

Since these risks are caused by humanity, they can be prevented by humanity, but what stops us is the difficulty of coordinate action.Image associée

Take Artificial Intelligence.

(There is a 50% chance we will develop high-level machine intelligence in 45 years, and 75% by the end of the century.)

It is difficult to predict what something smarter than us would do.  A sufficiently powerful system might be difficult to control, and so be hard to reverse once implemented.

What’s less appreciated is that new technologies will present further catastrophic risks.

Like genetically engineer a virus that’s as contagious as the Spanish Flu, but also deadlier, and which could spread for years undetected. That would be a weapon with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but far harder to prevent from being used.

So, let’s ask the question again.

What should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?

(The flippant answer is we first have continued to exist so that we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems.)

Improving technology? Helping the poor? Changing the political system? Free Education? Geo-engineering?- to mention a few.

Most of the best ways to tackle these risks are not easily taken by for-profit entities because the beneficiaries live in the future and can’t pay you.

For instance, a better-educated population would probably elect more enlightened leaders (cough). Improve the decision-making ability of people and institutions, this would help to make society, in general, more resilient, and solve many other problems.

However, in order for education to achieve anything, it would have to be on a very large scale to have any noticeable effect.

Improving technology holds the possibility of enormous gains, but also enormous risks.

Avoid accidents from AI systems are the most neglected of all risks.

More to the point, no matter what you think has happened in the past, if we look forward, improving technology, political organisation and freedom gives our descendants the potential to solve our current problems, and have vastly better lives.

Then, among the catastrophic risks, climate change gets the most attention, while issues like pandemics and AI are the most neglected.

An issue can be big but comparatively well-known and crowded, like climate change, or it can be small but neglected, like land use zoning reform.

In most countries, there is no government agency that naturally has mitigation of these risks in its remit.

So, even if we only focus on the impact on the present generation, these

catastrophic risks are one of the most serious issues facing humanity.

Probably part of the reason most people aren’t immediately ready to jump into action is that there appear to be so many problems and no simple solution presents itself for any of them.

One approach is to address each risk directly. Or rather than try to reduce each risk individually, we can try to make civilisation generally better at managing them – if we could all coordinate — if every nation agreed to contribute its fair share to reducing climate change, then all nations would benefit by avoiding its worst effects.

Unfortunately, such an approach in our capitalist consuming world is pie in the sky.

The truth is we only do so out of self-interest.

As we are witnessing with the Paris Climate Agreement made on 12 December 2015 when it comes down to the nitty gritty no one wants to pay either in the short term or long term.

It would be great if we could make the government have more concern for future generations.

To enable a universal action it has to be unseen and paid for by all without knowing. 

You only have to look at the reaction of the yellow jackets movement spontaneous calls to protest against the increase of the internal consumption tax on energy products. A rebellion of the provincial under-classes that typifies the 21st century (web-populism, fake news and a visceral, exaggerated hatred of both media and political elites).

Like the 5Star Movement in Italy, they started as an internet rebellion against representative democracy.

We all live in an apocalyptic bubble of social media- SO IF WE ARE TO GENUINELY TACKLE ANY OF THE WORLD PROBLEMS IT REQUIRES A PERPETUAL FUND THAT GENERATES ITS FUNDS FROM PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE NOT INCREASED TAXES.

(SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)

Such a fund would turn the United Nations from a begging organisation into a world organisation with clout.

AI CALCULATES 19% chance of extinction before 2100.

It’s possible to grow the capacity of a community faster than you can grow your individual wealth or career capital. WE NEED TO USE OUR BUYING POWER TO EFFECTS CHANGE.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "images of global issues"

Why?

Because we will need to change our way of thinking and the extent of how we consume resources.

To achieve food and water security. To stop HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND OCEAN DESTRUCTION – TO CREATE A MORE MODERN AND EFFECTIVE UN. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : IF WE ARE TO AVOID A MELT DOWN NOT JUST BY CLIMATE CHANGE BUT BY SOCIAL MEDIA. WE ALL KNOW THAT WE NEED TO REINVENT SOCIETY REAL QUICK,

06 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Capitalism, Climate Change., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Fresh Water., Humanity., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Poverty, Social Media, Sustaniability, Technology, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., War, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Twelve -minute read)

Most mainstream textbooks have the word “economics” in their title as if no differentiating adjective exists.

THE NASTY REALITY IS:

AS THE WORLD POPULATION GROWS IT WILL BE TO THE DETHRONEMENT OF THE PLANT AND TO THE SUSTAINABILITY OF ANY ECONOMIC SYSTEM WHETHER IT IS CAPITALIST OR OTHERWISE AS CAPITALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD A NEED FOR POVERTY TO KEEP COST DOWN.

However, through social media, the poor are no longer invisible and the consequences of this are now beginning to becoming evident.

It is a grim truism of modern life that everything from civil rights violations and health crises to environmental degradation and educational barriers are disproportionately suffered by the people least financially and socially equipped to deal with them.

Capitalism today still represented itself as freeing serfs, slaves, etc,  with freedom becoming capitalism’s self-celebration, which it largely remains today.

Yet the reality of capitalism is different from its celebratory self-image.

IT IS NOW a form of algorithmic trading in which funds trade on the small fluctuations in asset prices without ever owning the assets, with us the powerhouse in the making of fortunes that put colossal resources in the hands of a relative few, while at the same time, see others without even the means to sustain themselves.

Combined the above with climate change and poverty and THE FORTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (AS IT HAS BEEN CHRISTENED BY THE ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGICAL) IS CREATING A CAPITALIST WORLD THAT IS REMOVING IT FROM VIEW.

DRIVEN BY CONSUMPTION PRODUCING ALGORITHMS JUST FOR PROFIT FOR THE ONE PERCENTERS, WHILE OUR GOVERNMENTS ACT LIKE THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO GROWTH AT ALL COSTS.Poverty has always accompanied capitalism (as Thomas Piketty's work documents yet again).

Wherever you look you will see that enormous gap between rich and poor growing and this gap between rich and poor is now threatening to destroy us and the world we all live in.

To those who think capitalism and inequality need each other.

Capitalism requires inequality of wealth, runs this right-of-centre argument, to stimulate risk-taking and effort; governments trying to stem it with taxes on wealth, capital, inheritance and property kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

It took war and depression to arrest the inequality dynamic, along with the need to introduce high taxes on high incomes, especially unearned incomes, to sustain social peace.

Now the ineluctable process of blind capital multiplying faster in fewer hands is underway again and on a global scale with self-serving greed in the form of profit-seeking algorithms.

Anyone with the capacity to own in an era when the returns exceed those of wages and output will quickly become disproportionately and progressively richer- APPLE, MICROSOFT, E BAY, AMAZON- and when we buy their products online are in fact vote for them and their system.

The mass of employees are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the decisions that affect their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers’ efforts help to produce). In their exclusion from such decisions, modern capitalism’s employees resemble slaves and serfs.

So the speeding train of capitalism is “back on track,” resuming its rush toward stone walls of excess debt, stagnant mass incomes, capital relocating overseas, etc.

YOU CAN WATCH THIS PROCESS IN REAL TIME WITH  BREXIT, OR AMERICA FIRST.

In Britain, it may be true that the top 1% pays a third of all income tax, but income tax constitutes only 25% of all tax revenue: 45% comes from VAT, excise duties and national insurance paid by the mass of the population.

As a result, the burden of paying for public goods such as education, health and housing is increasingly shouldered by average taxpayers, who don’t have the wherewithal to sustain them. Wealth inequality thus becomes a recipe for slowing, innovation-averse, rentier economies, tougher working conditions and degraded public services.

All in all, you could say that no real changes have been made in global capitalism OTHER THAN IT IS NOW RUN BY ANALYSING ALGORITHMS THAT RECOMMEND WHERE, WHEN AND HOW WITH TO SATISFY SHORT TERM PLEASURE.

UNFORTUNILTY it is simply depriving us and our children of fundamental rights of a decent & caring society, fearless & dignified living, by a deprivation of the material conditions for the reproduction of society, and a failure to develop the full capabilities of human beings.

OF COURSE, our collective sense of justice is outraged as we are witnessing in the recent Paris Riots, the Climate Change Conference in Poland sponsored by coal trying to set rules to govern pledges that will be broken as soon as the ink dries and the ongoing Brexit charade which has nothing to do with peoples wellbeing.

Where does all of this leave us other than with an ominous sense of impending implosion reverberates throughout the world with national politics and culture waning no one seems to know or care.

Our TV screens with Christmas coming we are bombarded with the worst images of Capitalism – advertisers promoting materialism, alongside appeals to donate money to save everything from children in Yemen too abandoned animals.

While it is heartbreaking the worst part is that our governments are complicit.

Despite the famine, despite the bombing of a busload of school kids in Yemen countries like the US, UK, France, and Canada are still supplying the Saudis with hundreds of billions of dollars in tanks and missiles.

However, it has little effect as we look on from a distance sitting at home before our own little stages our TV’s, our I Pads, our Smartphones, our courtyards of miracles where an image sweeps across the previous one without trace.

Everything is on a reduced scale, even emotions.

That’s the trouble with shadow political power structures. Their true shape and purpose stay hidden while they capture democracy.

From all this, we shall draw some conclusions, in the absence of any convincing certainties one has to pretend that we shall solve Climate Change  (that is going to drive more inequality and eventually the extinction of our biodiversity, followed by us due to the lack of fresh water or clean air.) and currents world conflicts that are only the tip of the coming wars over diminishing natural resources.

What needs to happen?

Let’s put the plant first before space exploration, before material productivity consumption, before cultural identity, before consumerism, before America first, before Brexit isolation, before trade deals, before nuclear power, before religious beliefs, before skin colour, before short-term pleasure, before us.

Let’s go for a diverse economic system where toxic wealth inequalities are less indulged rather than a monopolised marketplace.

Let’s enshrine Water and Fresh air into all our actions.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media icons"

Any of the above can now only be achieved by using the power of Social media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.

THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIAL MEDIA THAT IS HAVING A REAL IMPACT ON SOCIETY IS THAT IT IS LEADERLESS.

On one hand, it generates insights, stimulates demand, and create targeted product offerings but when people are presented with the option of ‘liking’ a social cause, they use this to opt out of actually committing time and money.

Social sharing has encouraged people to use computers and mobile phones to express their concerns on social issues without actually having to engage actively with campaigns in real life.

On the other hand, it without social media, social, ethical, environmental and political ills would have minimal visibility.

Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from the hands of a few to the masses.

Capitalism understands the above more than our world organisation or governments.

Social networks feed off interactions among people, they become more powerful as they grow. Each person with marginal views can see that he’s not alone. And when these people find one another via social media, they can do things — create memes, publications and entire online worlds that bolster their worldview, and then break into the mainstream.

Social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.” Because social media allows people to communicate with one another more freely, they are helping to create surprisingly influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups – Popularism- Short-term politics with no long-term aspirations promoting social ills.

Across the globe, mobile devices dominate in terms of total minutes spent online. This puts the means to connect anywhere, at any time on any device in everyone’s hands.

Their support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content.

Is it not time that we demand that our internet platforms introduce a dislike button.

So far humans have had a monopoly on decision making but we are sleepwalking with Data Analyzing algorithms eroding our societies that have the sole purpose of predicting our next purchase or move.

Artificial intelligence in its current form is mostly harmless but that’s not going to last.

Fueled by powers of machine learning with no end in sight it is encroaching into to our homes without human examples or guidance, without any knowledge of the domain beyond basic rules of promoting profit.

WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE?

We need to ensure that Ai Systems are provable safe and beneficial, and unbias regardless of how intelligent they become.

Imagine the havoc and harm they will inflict with greater power, scope and social reach.

When developers are at a loss to explain the behaviour of their creations we will then need Ai to explain to humans why they reached certain decisions, or what their conclusions actually mean.

At the moment we are seeing poorly thought out systems released into the world without any real ethical or safety standards. Governments and our out of date international world organisation have a role to play, by introducing and enforcing standards and regulations.

Changing present capitalist corporate culture won’t be easy, but it needs to start at the top.

Just look at biotechnology some research findings are too dangerous to share with the public.

It is time we all grew up and accept some responsibility for Artifical Intelligence impact on the world.

Why?

Because AI is poised to be one of the most daunting challenges our species have ever faced,  decoupling us from human speed and timelines, operating beyond human levels of control and comprehension.

AT THE MOMENT IT IS RATHER THAN TURNING THE ATHOMISPHRIC DOWN IT IS CONTRIBUTING (IN MOST OF ITS FORM)  TO TURN IT UP.

On a deeper level, the idea of self-referential feedback may be crucial not only in the evolution of life but for its origin as well.

It may even be that the algorithmic nature of cellular automata could be the key to removing a major barrier to explaining life’s origin — defining what life is, to begin with.

It’s pretty hard to explain the origin of something if you don’t know what it is.

When the environment changes, the rules for surviving may change as well. Life’s activity generates feedback that influences the rules of life.

You can’t blame scientists for conceiving of the universe in terms familiar from their everyday life. That’s just the way that thinking works, whether it’s about the laws of nature or anything else. And you have to admit that nowadays computers have invaded everyday life so thoroughly that it’s only natural for scientists to think about nature in a computational way.

If the world is a computer, life is an algorithm, so all algorithms and how they

work, and for what reasons, should be made public to ensure both social and

  “environmental justice.” Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of computer algorithms"

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES GROWTH AT ALL COSTS.

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in 2018: The Year of Disconnection., Arms Trade., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, Environment, European Union., Fake News., Google it., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Poverty, Social Media., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The Refugees, The world to day., TTIP. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, Universal Basic Income, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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( A one minute read)

In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.

One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.

At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.

Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.

 

 

 

 

 

What can be done?

See the previous post on a World Aid commission.

THE BEADY ASK’S: WHERE DO YOU THINK POVERTY CAME FROM AND WHERE IS IT GOING TO END UP.

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Poverty

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( A twenty-minute read if you want a world worth living in)

Most of us were taught that poverty started with the Industrial Revolution.

For the most part this is true but it did not happen in the isolation of the British Empire.

This story is powerful in its simplicity but if we rewind to about 1500 people living in South America, India, and Asia were much better off than Europeans. In fact Europe was just emerging from the dark ages.

China and India controlled most if not nearly all the world economy.

The Question is how did this change and why?

I put it down to Christopher Columbus and shoddy geographical calculations.

On his second outing in the Caribbean he was looking for gold and as a result the Spanish invasion killed must of the islands inhabitants. Then came a bloke named Cortes who ripped off the Aztec of Mexico,followed by Pizarro yet another Spanish conquistador with an unquenchable thirst for gold.

A total of over  185,000 kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver were pilfer from Latin America and pumped into Spain and then used to pay for Spanish war and debts.

(A 100 million kilograms of silver invested back then @ 5% would amount to $165 trillion to-day. More than double the world’s total GDP to-day)

This wealth allowed Europe to grow its economic wealth beyond the China or India.

The result was Europeans outsourced its labour into wars and colonization reducing the population of the rest of the world by slavery, epidemic diseases and massacres while enjoying the rich life.

(  Free Slavery labour benefited the USA Colonies by over 222.5 million hours)  Britain pay compensation of over £20m to slave owners equivalent to £300 million to-day which tell us nothing of the total value they produced.

The Silver was turned into cotton and sugar and spices. Cotton being the key raw material for the European Industrial Revolution.

The Surviving slaves got nothing.

Indeed without the slave colonies of the New world there would have being no market for the Industrial goods.

You could say that the above is rather a simplistic explanation but development in Africa and Latin America was effectively stolen by Europe.

So where are we to-day.

  • Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
  • The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
  • Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
  • Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
  • 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this?

Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization and technology are global decisions, policies, and practices.

Formulated by the rich and powerful.

These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.

As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.

The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to escape poverty.

The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.

To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources.

This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.

Now we are looking at a new form of Poverty currently being created by a few monopolies. I call it Algorithm Poverty.

Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present. In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.

The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.

Inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence. Almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

And we wonder why the world is in a state of chaos.

Around 21,000 children die every day around the world. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty.

Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation.

Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.

Poverty leads to hunger. There are many inter-related issues causing hunger. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc.

Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place.

Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive.

To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.

For the first time in our history Technology offers us a chance to distribute the world’s wealth fairly.

Without Trade agreements, Aid, Repayment, Corruption, Power Brokering by NGOs, United Nations Begging, Bureaucratic interference, or any other hidden agendas.

It could be both implemented and funded by the very Algorithms that are going to spread poverty. ( See previous Posts)

It requires the large capitalist monopoly platforms to supply a free basic mobile phone to every person register as citizen of a country world-wide.

On registration the people would be allocated a pin number.

This pin would allow them to access a monthly Basic non repayable no strings attached Income payment.

There is no other way of ensuring that our world can fight poverty and climate change.

Most of the causes of hunger are found in global politics.

People are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it.

The number of people overweight or obese is now rivaling the number of people suffering from hunger around the world.

Its time to get off our fat asses and share our wealth not push it around to create more wealth.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

If you want a world worth something in the future now is the time to start creating it. Solve                                             World Poverty once and

For all.

It can be done with the press of a button.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.